The third segment of my next mystery novel, as yet untitled, follows. As previously noted, the novel involves a deceased friend, an abandoned apartment, a search for a safety deposit box, and the shame of long forgotten actions.
Quinn’s apartment was quite familiar to Purchell, the frequency of his visits there making a close acquaintance with the surroundings unavoidable. It reminded him of his first apartment in the city, a small furnished bachelor on the first floor of an old Victorian house that had been converted into six separate units. There was very little difference, at least to Purchell, between that old apartment, which was likely still occupied by a young tenant like he and his first wife had been, and the rooms that Quinn had inhabited until he passed away. It was hardly luxurious. Quinn’s place was situated in what could be accurately be described as a row house, a dwelling in an unremarkable brick building. It was situated up from an unmarked wooden door, which was never locked and upon which brass numerals were once attached. It was a sparsely furnished flat at the top of a flight of stairs that was missing several steps. The place consisted of a grimy bathroom, a kitchen counter with a sink, a barely functioning refrigerator, and a stove that appeared to have been installed some time in the 1950s. There was a small living room in which the housebound occuptant sat on one of the two old sofa chairs in the room or laid on the narrow wooden bed situated under one of the two windows that faced the street from that second floor. The room also featured an old television set that was seldom turned off, two night side tables, a coffee table that was always covered with old newspapers, magazines, books, coffee cups and beer bottles, an intermittedly functioning floor lamp, a disconnected telephone on the wall near the stove, a large tin can that was normally used as a spitton and, most dramatically, several oxygen tanks. There was no bedroom. It was a bachelor. Jack called it the “beauty of decay” while most people, including Mark, called it a dump.
Since Jack Quinn was estranged from any suggestion of family, having claimed at various times that both parents were either dead, forgotten or both, his bitterness about his relationship with both of them historically evident. Any siblings he may have had were lost somewhere on the map. He said that he thought that his brother had moved to California. He was a musician and was by nature rootless. He had not seen or heard from him in decades. His sister, who was younger and with whom he never did have any significant relationship, had married a man, whose name he could not recall, and moved away as well, to where he did not know. That was maybe twenty years past. He could not even remember her married name. So it was left to Mark Purchell to make any arrangements, Deborah apparently was apparently too upset to participate. There was neither church service nor burial ceremony. Jack Quinn was buried in the ground on a slight incline beneath a small metal disk in the Royal Cross cemetary. There was no name on the disk, only a number.
Although it took some time, a will for Jack Quinn was eventually found, which Mark found somewhat surprising. Other institutional arrangements had to be made. A couple of government departments had to be advised, a couple of pensions had to be discontinued, a police report completed and filed, and the cost of his burial paid. Purchell and Deborah Inkster split the cost.